45 minutes exposure, Fuji Superia 400 film.
300mm f/2.8 Pentax lens.
NGC 4565 is a beautiful, edge-on spiral galaxy in Coma. It is an outlying member of the Virgo galaxy cluster, which covers a large portion of the sky centred on the Coma/Virgo border. The cluster lies at a distance of about 60 million light years.
NGC 4565 is generally considered as the best example of an edge-on galaxy. In an 8" telescope the dark lane is just visible, While in a 12" telescope or larger, the galaxy is a really fine sight.
On the extreme right-hand edge of this image is the bright eliptical galaxy NGC 4494 (magnitude 9.8).
Not so well known is that there are a number of faint galaxies in the same field as NGC 4565 that should be visible in a 10" telescope. The brightest of these is NGC 4562 and it is visible in the photograph just to the lower right (south west) of NGC 4565. It is worthwhile spending some time observing these faint galaxies, and then going back to NGC 4565. The amount of extra detail visible than makes NGC 4565 all the more impressive.
